The 100 in 10 Draft Challenge & Interview with Last_Elf

Minion Masters!

100 in 10 Challenge

It's time to put your Draft skills to the test, Masters - Today we're announcing the start of the 100 in 10 Draft Challenge! Inspired by community contests in other events, the challenge is to Stream yourself getting 100 wins over the course of 10 Draft runs - If you win and have your results verified by BetaDwarf, you'll receive the Cosmic Cleaver avatar! Here's a graphic with the full rules below:

You can find the logo mentioned in the rules at the top of this section.

All submissions must include working links to the Livestreams in which the challenge was done. All conditions described must be met in order to be eligible for the prize. Runs will be reviewed manually, so please be patient in waiting for a response and receiving your Avatar. There is currently no formal end date for this Challenge. If you have any further questions, email thatsprite@betadwarf.com .

Good luck, Masters!

Interview with Last_Elf

This week, we have a special interview with Youtube Content Creator Last_Elf!

Can you give us a brief introduction of what you do?

I am doing fun Minion Masters gameplay videos. I try to come up with new ideas and strategies, something you are not facing on the ladder and mostly just crazy decks. Not tier 1, but definitely fun. I publish 3 new videos every week with more than 300 videos already on my channel.

How long have you been playing Minion Masters for?                        

I've been playing for 2,5 years now and creating YouTube videos for 1,5 years.

                       

What made you get into creating Minion Masters content?

This might sound greedy, but I wanted to earn money. When my son was born, I've realized, that if I want to have time on games, I need to make it a living. After 2 years, I am nowhere near my goal and it's still not worth the time, I put into it. But I really enjoy it, I love the game and the community around the game.

What do you think is the best video you've made so far?

My personal favourite is for sure Solo Priestesses. I managed to have 7 Priestesses on board and watching how desperately your opponent tries to kill them is just hilarious. We've recreated it on premade with 11 Priestesses on board in the video called Holy Army and in a friendly coordinated battle called Healing Hell. I think this title doesn't need an explanation :D

Where can people follow you?

I have my own Discord server, Facebook page and Twitter. 

For my most loyal fans I even have a Patreon page, where they can support me. 

You can visit my website LastElf.Net where you can find all the links ;)

You can find Last_Elf's Youtube channel right here - He makes tons of entertaining gameplay videos featuring all kinds of oddball strategies, so he's definitely worth checking out!

The Harbinger Challenge Season 2 [XBOX]

Are you an Xbox player looking for competitive Minion Masters Tournaments? The Harbinger League are back again with a new season of exciting tournaments over a period of two weeks, leading up to an exciting Top 12 and Top 4 Showdown with the winner walking away with the Tournament-Exlcusive Dynasty Morellia skin!

Read about all of the details on their Toornament page here, and sign up to their Discord Server for any questions. Good luck, Xbox Masters!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Balance Changes, New Art, $1000 Minion Masters Tournament

Minion Masters!

Season Pass #2 Inbound!

If you've been keeping up with out Charging Into Darkness reveals, then that means you're aware that the second Season Pass of this Expansion is right around the corner! 

Next week on the 25th of June, Version 1.14 will be releasing with a whole host of brand new content, including new cards Sugilite Shield, Lady Infray the Spire Warden, and Skeleton Crew! 

Check out our Update Site for all the juicy details. Which of the two currently revealed cards is your favourite? And don't forget to let us know what you think of Skeleton Crew once it comes out!

Balance Changes

Today we've got a preview of some of the balance changes coming with Version 1.14! As always, these aren't all of them, but should highlight some of the larger changes we're planning to make:

Hypnotize Rework

• NEW EFFECT: Enemy minions within the AoE will start attacking, and prioritise, friendly units for the duration. Cannot attack the Master Tower.
• Duration 5 -> 6
• Call Slitherbound Count 1 -> 2
• Dev Comments: Hypnotize has been a fairly problematic card design wise for a while now, particularly in 2v2 game modes, and we've gone through multiple iterations of different designs to create an effect that is more fair to the opponent while retaining the core identity of the spell inflicting chaos in the middle of a fight. In particular, we took issue with it being implemented in cheese strategies such as those with Rock Rivals that offered very little interactivity from the opponent.

Call to Arms

• Mana Cost 4 -> 5

Swarmer Totem

• Production Speed 6 seconds -> 7 seconds

Troubadour

• NEW: Highland Revelry: Give Slow to nearby enemy Minions

Shielded Crossbow Dudes

• NEW: If you don't control any bridges, summon an extra Crossbow Dude.

New Card Art

Some of you have noticed, and admired, a lot of visual reworks that have been coming to Minion Masters recently, be it card art updates, or entirely new models (as seen with Dragon Nest). We're just as excited to see what the Art team comes up with as you are, so we're going to be making more of an effort to feature their creations in the blog going forward.

Most of the time when art or models get updated, it's to fit with an updated or revised visual identity we have for their faction. Alternatively, it could be that the models are too old to properly work with going forward or don't meet the level of quality we'd like for the game - Some of the models in the game are still dating back to our very first game, after all!

This Update will be bringing some relatively simple changes - Brand new Card Art for the Scrat Pack and Bridge Buddies cards. Bridge Buddies' art was starting to look fairly unfitting when lined up with the other Scrat cards in its visual style, particularly due to the extensive referencing of the 3d model when creating it. So we've given it an entirely new card art! For Scrat Pack, we're still fond of the original identity of the card art, but wanted to give it a fresh coat of paint to reflect the updated Scrat designs. Check them out below:

We also have a brand new model for Blue Golem coming in this update, too - Stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook pages for an exclusive reveal on Monday!

$1000 Minion Masters Tournament

This weekend, Shadow Gaming TV are hosting their Minion Masters Summer International Tournament, where the winner receives a massive prize of $1000!

The 1v1 event will be taking place this Sunday the 21st at 11 AM PST on their Twitch Channel, with signups closing shortly before the event starts. It's promising to be an exciting event with a ton of players already signed up!

Check out the full rules of the Tournament and signup on their Battlefy link!

Emote Contest & Twitch Drops Boost

Minion Masters!

Starting this Friday, we'll begin showcasing our Season Pass spoilers for new cards and content that'll be coming in Version 1.14! Make sure to stop on by our Update Site to check it out and take a look at the awesome new content coming soon!

Emote Contest

It's been a while, but we're back with another Minion Masters Emote Contest! The Emote Contest is a community competition that allows your custom Minion Masters emotes to be immortalized on the Minion Masters Discord Server! Here's how to enter:

• Make a cool Minion Masters emote! They don't have to be just puffs, but the general guideline for an emote is a 1:1 ratio emoticon, like the ones you'd see in-game. Make sure that it looks nice as a downscaled emote, too, as that may affect your chances.
• Head over to the official Minion Masters discord at http://discord.gg/minionmasters and post your entry in the #emote-contest-3 channel.
• Once the Contest ends on the 18th of June, 5 candidates and their emotes will be presented to the community for voting. The three emotes that receive the most votes will be declared the winners!
• The winners will have their emotes added to the Minion Masters Discord for everyone to use, as well as a special credit in the FAQ!
• Emotes must be Minion Masters related and not use copyrighted material that isn't from BetaDwarf.
• Entries must be your own original works. Any medium can be used to create them.
• Entries must be new. Emotes from the previous contests are not eligible.
• Entries must not violate the server rules.

Entries will close on the 18th of June at 0800 UTC. Good luck, Masters!

Twitch Drops Boost Incoming

There's a big boost to Twitch Drops coming to compensate for the issues we had during 1.12. From June 11th to June 18th, you can get triple value from your Twitch Drops, making them worth 300 Gold each! Make sure to stop on by your favourite Twitch Stream while the event is ongoing and get your rewards!

Or, if you want to start streaming during this event and share the love, make sure to connect your Minion Masters account to Twitch to earn rewards while streaming - Learn more here!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Accursed Ascension Rework

Minion Masters!

A quick note before we begin; there was a minor error on the Charging Into Darkness Update Site where it listed the available masters for the new Adventure as 6. This was incorrect, and has been altered to the correct amount of 3. We apologize for the miscommunication.

Accursed Ascension Rework

This week, we've got news of a rework to the Accursed Ascension mechanic coming in Version 1.13. A frequent issue we found with the mechanic was that, particularly as a new player, the condition you needed to fulfill wasn't always intuitive, and at times could feel somewhat clumsy. 

The requirement of obtaining Spectral Essence was especially confusing in this perspective - It wasn't clear what Spectral Essence actually was at first glance and where it could be found, and could also cause confusion when a player obtained it without knowing what the mechanic was. This was doubly so for cards that had Spectral Essence but not Accursed Ascension - You'd receive a ghost particle from your Skeleton card that would go to your Master tower, but you had no idea what that actually meant, or if it even did anything.

As such, we're changing Accursed Ascension to be the following;

• Spend 60 Mana on Accursed faction cards to gain Accursed Ascension.

Our hope with this change is to make the mechanic easier to understand at a glance, and also encourage greater freedom when creating Accursed Ascension decks. Previously when building a deck centered on Accursed Ascension, you would simply look for the most efficient Spectral Essence cards to include, which had the potential issue of some Accursed cards being completely disregarded in those decks. While it'll clearly be the most ideal option to load your Ascension deck with a ton of Accursed cards, we're fairly confident that this isn't much of a difference compared to how you would build such a deck before.

Wild Cards Feedback

Over the last few weeks during our Wild Cards test, we've been collecting a ton of feedback from community, leaderboards and in-game sources to gauge the effectiveness of the rework. Overall we've seen that it's a positive step forward for the game, but we've also identified that there are various areas that require improvement going forward, and certain elements that were not impacted enough by the change.

For now, we're going to keep the Rework in the game while we investigate what directions we want to pursue for the future. In the meantime, we're going to continue to try and address the currently problematic Wild Cards in future balance patches. We want to thank everyone that helped us out by participating in the tests and answering our in-game surveys.

Dwarf Stream Incoming!

We've got a developer stream coming up for the release of Charging Into Darkness! We'll be doing a full showcase of the card Resonating Blast Crystal, as well as a full preview of all of the new contents arriving with the update. Join Community Manager That Sprite on the official BetaDwarf Developer Stream on the 25th of May, at 1900 UTC+2!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Stormcharging & PTR Signups

Minion Masters!

Charging into Darkness - Lord Fanriel the Stormcharger

Last week, we launched our new Expansion Site for Charging into Darkness. The story of this new expansion follows High-Mage Leiliel searching for her old friend, Lord Fanriel. Fanriel himself is a bulky but slow-attacking leader who charges into the fray via his Stormcharge ability, and we're opting to showcase his signature ability:

via Gfycat

Please note that the animations are not finalized yet, so things may look slightly different when the card is actually released. Tomorrow is the reveal of Dormant Defenders, so look forward to that!

We're looking for PTR signups!

We're opening our doors for PTR testers again to help us test upcoming content and balance changes!

As a PTR tester, you will test new content on the PTR and provide feedback for the Minion Masters design team through questionnaires and discuss feedback with the team directly in the Discord channel. Responses from the PTR testing group is an extremely important part of creating new content for the game.

To join, you must be able to write in English, be open-minded, and have time to test and discuss new cards, masters and other content with us. It is a requirement that you are open to testing new cards/masters through rigorous playtesting. You must also have a Steam account and be able to play the game on PC (you will have the full collection of cards at your disposal).

To sign up, answer this questionnaire here and we'll contact you via your Discord account if you're accepted:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdy4N1jO2PXJTy3R8UHqS6Aa0meFVyI2wD8CWrt1OhPPUyRuw/viewform?usp=pp_url

Make sure your voice is heard on the Wild Cards Rework!

We just finished up the Week #1 Survey on the Wild Cards Rework Test. Did you respond to it while it was in the news? Next Monday we'll start the second survey and we want to make sure everyone from the community has their say as the meta develops. If you still want to submit a response to the week 1 survey, you can find it right here.

Cheers from BetaDwarf!